The Gem of Amara
by Jake
Summary: How it started, and why it's not over. This is the first story in the Official Sponsor series.


SPOILERS: Buffy/Angel Xover: "The Harsh Light of Day"/"In the Dark"  
DISCLAIMER: This is just a fan fiction. Sunnydale and its denizens are the properties of Joss Whedon and his Wacky Pals (tm). The original characters are all my fault.  
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Amara bint Akbar Al-Shazar was sad. She was easily one of the most desirable young women in late 9th Century Arabia. The lovely young daughter of a wealthy and influential merchant could have had her pick of suitors, *if* her power-hungry father hadn't already promised her to the oldest son of another powerful Baghdadi. And she had such a wonderful man picked out before the arranged betrothal, namely her husband-to-be's brother.  
  
Nasreen bint Akbar Al-Shazar was angry. There were no wealthy young men having their fathers seek arranged marriage with her and she was infuriated at her younger sister's good fortune. Nasreen wasn't ugly, but standing next to Amara, she may as well have been invisible to eligible bachelors. So it came as no great surprise to anyone who truly knew her that Nasreen plotted Amara's death.  
  
Amara had gotten into the bad habit of meeting Habib, her lover and future brother-in-law, for late night trysts. They did nothing to threaten her virginity but they expressed their love as much as they could in the short time they had together. And she naively trusted her sister with this knowledge.  
  
Nasreen used a great portion of her own savings to hire a criminal expediter with rather unpleasant connections. One night not long before the wedding, when they should have been in their beds in their separate homes, Amara and Habib were attacked in a local inn by a pair of vampires. Habib was sucked dry. Amara wasn't so lucky. She was raped and turned into a vampire.  
  
Word spread quickly throughout Baghdad about the horrible things that had happened. But no one could find Amara's body to cremate it before she awoke as a monster. The Al-Shazar family was shamed.  
  
Delia bint Abdullah ibn Tariq Al-Rukh was despondent. She was the first wife of Akbar Al-Shazar but she had only bore him three children. They were Nasreen, Omar and Amara. Omar died as a sickly preteen, and Delia's place as First Wife was all that kept her from losing status to the younger wives by being the only mother of no sons.  
  
Now that Amara, the most desirable of Akbar's daughters, was defiled and cursed to live as a monster, Delia's high status in the Al-Shazar household was all but lost. And she knew that her own daughter Nasreen was to blame.  
  
Delia had a supernatural card of her own to play.  
  
Tariq Al-Rukh was heartsick. Delia was his favorite grandchild because all the others had disappointed him in some way or another. But now she had, as well. Or at least her children had, and that was almost the same thing. But he was determined to help her in whatever way he could. She came humbly begging him for a favor; something new for her. Her despair was a palpable thing.  
  
When he was much younger, Tariq had gained an obligation from something that most men would rather die than meet, much less bargain with. But he had not earned the name Al-Rukh by being faint of heart. Now he was going to call in a favor that he had hoped to take to his grave, uncollected. He sighed.  
  
Tir ibn Tir ibn Iblis was sullen. He, a grandson of the Demon King Himself, was an afrit to be feared throughout all of the Middle East. Now he was forced to act like a common djinn, and fulfill an obligation to a mere mortal that he had completely forgotten about.  
  
But an oath was an oath, even for afrits, and Tir ibn Tir was going to grant the wish of Tariq Al-Rukh. However, not without the usual *twist* that made wishes granted by djinn far more likely to be curses than blessings.  
  
Delia Umm Amara had but one wish, to bring her youngest daughter back to life as a virgin. Tir ibn Tir explained that he did not have the power of resurrection, that only his grandfather and a few uncles could grant such a thing. But he could arrange for Amara to live a long and safe existence. They haggled, and the following was agreed upon.  
  
Amara the vampire would be bound by magicks to never attack a member or servant or slave of any Baghdadi household. Delia didn't want that stain on her family. In addition, Amara would be given an enchanted necklace which would make her unkillable "as long as she keeps her wits about her." It was something new to the world, and priceless to a vampire.  
  
The cost was big. Delia either had to turn Nasreen over to the Royal Guard for buying the murders of Amara and Habib or Delia had to give up her life as a wealthy man's out-of-favor wife to become a new djinn, a vengeance demon.  
  
She agreed to the latter, and got permission to give the necklace to Amara as her first task as a djinn. When Tir ibn Tir was forging the necklace from emerald and gold, Delia stole a portion of each component and forged a ring with her new magickal powers.  
  
When she gave her daughter the necklace, she warned Amara that somehow Tir ibn Tir would arrange for her to lose it, because that was the way of afrits. She then warned Amara to wear the ring at all times, because the instant she lost the necklace, the power of protection would be transferred to the ring and she would still be protected. Tir ibn Tir had declared that there was to be only one Gem of Vampiric Protection, but he failed to say "for all time." Delia chose to make the condition "at any given time."  
  
That was the last time she spoke to her daughter, who was wearing a new necklace and a new ring as she prepared to join a caravan leaving Baghdad. Delia was not the most successful djinn, and died not very long after a girl named Anya became a djinn.  
  
Amara fared worse than her mother. The loophole in Delia's wish that neither she nor her daughter fully grasped was the "keep your wits about you" clause. It turns out that the phrase was a euphemism for "don't lose your head" -- literally. It seems that nothing can make a vampire immune to beheading.  
  
And that is how Amara died. Where fire and stakes and sunlight had all failed, a good sharp scimitar to the neck did the trick. Naturally the necklace fell from the headless body and the power transference was triggered. Not that it did Amara any good beyond preserving her body; beheaded is beheaded.  
  
Delia flew to her daughter's body before the mortals could defile it and she whisked it away to the Valley of the Sun, where a nascent Hellmouth lay dormant. She rejoined her daughter's head to her body and placed the necklace again around her daughter's neck. She removed the ring and threw it among the rest of Amara's jewelry, should some lucky vampire come across Amara's tomb.  
  
She then spread the story all over the Old World about the Gem of Amara. All of it was true except the knowledge that the Gem was now in the New World, which no 'living' vampire had yet ever gone to.  
  
The number of vampires that died in much of the 10th Century was huge, with vampires taking needless risks in their search for the UnHoly Grail as well as killing each other when one was feared to be too close to the prize. Delia's heart warmed at the thought that the monsters that destroyed Amara now destroyed each other for an unattainable treasure.  
  
But even common vampires get wise after a while, and in time the Gem of Amara was believed to be a fairy tale, and only a very rare text had (most of) the true story.  
  
When Angel destroyed the ring that was the Gem of Amara, another power transference took place. One wonders if Harmony will ever discover the true value of the necklace that hangs on a wall in her lair.  
  
The End  



End file.
